


Osseum Veritas

by Dawnwind



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-28
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-15 05:50:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting hit by a car brings make some childhood memories for Starsky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Osseum Veritas

Filtering out all distractions, Ken Hutchinson kept his eyes glued to the speeding vehicle two car lengths in front of him. Driving faster than he preferred, Hutch kept the Torino centered on the other's tail, sensing more than seeing the streets of Bay City flying by his windows. Unaccustomed to being at the wheel of the powerful car without his partner beside him he felt oddly off balance, his nerves on edge from the ear-piercing scream of the siren.

Flashing like a red and white arrow the Torino sped through intersections in full pursuit, other cars and trucks slowing to move aside for the two ground locked rockets like a modern day parting of the Red Sea.

Hutch's belly clenched all the tighter when the front runner changed lanes, seeming to leap the center divider as it took a corner too sharply. Swinging a hard left in front of a line of astonished drivers Hutch pulled into the parking lot of Bay General Hospital seconds after the ambulance.

He didn't bother finding a legal parking spot, but did as Starsky usually did, nosed the Torino into a space marked 'Emergency Vehicles only'. Smack in front of the ER bay doors the paramedics were already unloading the gurney containing a considerably battered David Starsky.

Relieved to see his partner once again, Hutch fought the urge to run to his side and hang on for dear life. Even from this distance he could see that Starsky appeared to be awake, and mad as hell.

Well, good, because he felt exactly the same way but for perhaps different reasons. Hutch wanted to rant and rave, rip into Starsky for his idiocy. What an asinine thing to do, running out in front of a car while chasing a purse snatcher! They hadn't even been on duty.

Instead he followed the gurney at a sedate distance, trying to bleed off some of his simmering anger. It wasn't worth it--besides he recognized that most of the misplaced rage was simply inverted fear at what might have happened. And Starsky certainly didn't need to be yelled at while he was recovering in the ER. Now, once he was in his own home, that was another matter.

"Hutch!" Starsky yelled as two nurses took possession of the gurney and pushed it into a curtained area. "Get me out of here!"

"He's a live wire, your partner." The pretty paramedic with hair as blond as his own glanced over at Hutch before she grabbed a couple of bags of IV solution and some tubing off a supply cart. "The whole ride he kept insisting that he didn't need to go to the hospital and that he'd do fine--" She snorted in derision. "'S got two broken wrists." Her tall black partner nodded silently, taking the load of equipment from her out to the truck. "Probably a Colles' fracture on the right, unless I miss my guess."

"A Colles?" Hutch asked, his worry returning full bore. "What's that?"

"When you hit the ground hard you put out your hands in front of you, right?"

She demonstrated, bending both hands at the wrists and leaning forward. Hutch nodded, fascinated and repulsed at the same time. He wasn't sure he really wanted a play by play on exactly how Starsky had broken his bones. "Break your fall with your hands, and you fracture the end of the radius. Just above all those little wrist bones. We see it all the time."

From beyond the curtain Hutch could hear Starsky protesting whatever treatment his nurse was proposing and decided he'd better go in to defuse the potential explosion. "T-thanks for the update..." Hutch grinned to be friendly since she'd somewhat overwhelmed him with the medical lecture.

"Damn, I do that all the time," she groaned, pushing back fine, almost colorless hairs from around her forehead. "Come on too strong. I was wondering...maybe you'd be up for a cup of coffee? We're off for half an hour."

"Oh," Hutch glanced over at the cubicle where he wanted to be, amazed that he hadn't even recognized the come-on. Was he that caught up in other things? "Uh--you know, I don't usually pass on an offer like that from a gorgeous women. But..."

"There's somebody?" She nodded. "With your looks there has to be. Sorry."

"Hey, a raincheck for the coffee? Some time when my partner's not hollering on the exam table?" He extended a hand, clasping hers warmly. "Ken Hutchinson, the dull witted."

"Ellen Matthiesson, with her foot in her mouth." She pointed one long tapered finger at the blue curtain. "Sounds like he's about to make a run for it."

"Hutch!" Starsky yelled with gusto. Hutch couldn't manage to hide his grin, mentally going down his internal Starsky checklist--lungs in working order--check. Mental capacity undamaged--check. No doubt about it, Starsky could roll with the punches, even when hit by a speeding car.

"Um--I'd better go. Starsky is calling." Hutch gestured behind him.

"All the good ones are taken." Ellen shrugged good-naturedly but Hutch was no longer paying any attention to her. "Coffee someday, then. And maybe I can sign your partner's cast."

Hutch parted the curtain, caught between a grimace at Starsky's scraped and bloody face, and laughter at his predicament. A heavy set nurse with her white cap cocked at a determined angle was poised over Starsky with a pair of scissors, and about to take the first snip.

"Hutch! Stop her, she wants to cut my jeans off, an' I just got this pair broken in perfectly," Starsky cried.

"He said he wanted to do it himself," the nurse said humorlessly. "With two splints on, I don't think so."

"Well, just hold on," Hutch said. "Starsk, your knees are showing through--these are ruined, there are big gaping holes in both pant legs." And both knees were skinned raw but he didn't think that was helpful to mention.

"That's okay, I can wear 'em as cut-offs, as long as she doesn't do anything rash!" Starsky insisted. "Hey, I've got an idea, Hutch can take 'em off, right?"

While Hutch had helped Starsky undress on a few occasions when he'd been under the weather, it had never been under the eye of a nurse holding a sharp object. On the other hand, he totally understood why Starsky might not want said sharp object anywhere near certain vulnerable parts of his anatomy.

"Yes, I'll do it," he agreed.

"I have to call Radiology to see when he can go up for x-rays, so you've got one minute," the nurse said stiffly, obviously displeased to have to bend to her patient's wishes. Hutch got a quick look at her badge which proclaimed her to be Bertha Majors. No woman ever fit her name more perfectly than Bertha did.

"Okay, we have one minute," Hutch reiterated when Bertha had turned gone off for her phone call.

"I usually like to take it slower than that but if it has to be..." Starsky quipped, lifting his hips off the table so Hutch could strip off the bloody, ripped jeans. It also gave Hutch a really good look at the damage the car had inflicted. Luckily, the black roadster had been low slung, hitting Starsky about hip range and knocking him to the ground. He'd managed to break his fall with his hands, as Ellen pointed out, and then rolled out of the way, narrowly escaping the wheels going right over his feet. All in all, Starsky had once again come out better than could possibly be expected. He was a mess of road burns and bruises, the most notable being a scraped forehead, nose and chin from the faceplant right into the pavement, a spreading black and blue mark on his left hip and the aforementioned skinned knees.

"Careful," Starsky hissed when the material brushed over sore areas.

"That's exactly what you should have been," Hutch retorted, balling the jeans up and tossing them to one side.

"What?"

"Starsky! What were you thinking? Running off after that guy in a parking lot full of cars jockeying to get out? It was cavalier, and stupid."

"Well, I'm so sorry!" Starsky snorted sarcastically, cradling the bulky splints to his chest. "I thought our job was to protect the public and catch the criminals."

"It was our day off..."

"So? I saw the guy grab the old lady's purse...I stopped him didn't I?"

"He was so distracted by you getting hit that he ran smack into a parked car! Stadium security guards grabbed him."

"Didja get the driver?" Starsky asked more plaintively.

Guilty at that failure Hutch shook his head. There'd been too many people, half scattering in fear of the out of control driver, the other half running to check on Starsky, himself included. With the security guards sitting on the thief no one had gone after the car. "License was 773 SN something. I called it in."

"Bastard," Starsky swore to no one in particular.

"Could you two keep it down a little? This is a hospital with sick people." A tall angular man with thinning brown hair parted the curtain. "David Starsky? Tried to stop a car with your hip?"

"That would be him," Hutch said huffily.

"Amazingly, I'd figured that one out." The doctor smiled. "I'm Carson McCullers--like the author, but I don't."

"Don't what?" Starsky responded automatically.

"Don't write." He put on a pair of glasses, scanning the chart. "Some people laugh at my jokes."

"I'm kind of preoccupied today," Hutch said sitting down on a small stool out of the way.

"Hutch had no sense of humor when he's under a lot of stress." Starsky flinched, panting as the McCullers examined his wounds. "I, on the other hand, think McCullers writes good stuff. Loved that movie 'Member of the Wedding'."

"All in all, I think you'll live. Mostly contusions and abrasions." He gently probed Starsky's right arm, causing Starsky to hiss with pain, then used a small flash light to check for head trauma and brain damaged. "Both wrists are most probably broken, but I think you knew that." Starsky nodded glumly, and Hutch had a stab of remorse. He in no way wished his best friend hurt, far from it, but in a tiny way Starsky had gotten what he deserved. It had been a stupid, asinine move, running out in front of a car. What if he'd been more seriously injured? Even killed. Suddenly Hutch was no longer just remorseful, he was terrified.

"Was it a Colles fracture?" Hutch recalled Ellen's diagnosis.

"Wouldn't rule that out, but I'll have to see the films first," The doctor answered.

"How long am I gonna have to be here?" Starsky shifted his wrists on his lap, wincing.

"After x-ray we'll cast both your wrists..."

"Both of 'em?" Starsky squeaked and for a second Hutch saw a flash of pain that had nothing to do with broken limbs, but Starsky seemed to brighten with the doctor's next words.

"If the x-ray shows it is necessary. After that I'll write up a prescription for some Tylenol with codeine, and you can get out of here."

"For real?" Starsky asked delightedly. "No overnight in the hospital? No constant wake ups from the nurses?"

"Are you sure?" Hutch questioned. "Don't have to check for head injury or anything?"

"He knew who wrote "Member of the Wedding'," McCullers shrugged good naturedly. "And his pupils both reacted to my trusty little penlight. But all right, for the tie breaker, detective--who won the game this afternoon?"

"Dodgers took the Oakland A's for all they were worth," Starsky supplied with a satisfied nod.

"X-ray is ready for him, doctor," Bertha stuck her head back in.

"Perfect timing!" McCullers grinned.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Hutch, I can do it!" Starsky retorted, angling the fingers sticking out of the left arm cast in a different direction to attempt the tricky maneuver of opening the car door.

Standing on the opposite side of the door, on the driveway in front of Starsky's house Hutch just waited, looking annoyingly patient, from Starsky's perspective. Trying to close his right thumb and forefinger on the handle, Starsky swore. There was absolutely no way he was going to succeed at this, no matter how many different variations of the maneuver he tried. Opposable thumbs, indeed. With a cast on each arm he was suddenly reduced to the status of some lower form of mammal, just swimming out of the primordial sea, and unfit for life on land.

"Are you finished?" Hutch asked pleasantly.

"Would you just open the door?" Starsky growled.

"It's gonna be a long six weeks," Hutch muttered, more to himself than Starsky but that didn't mean he wasn't overheard.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, Starsk." Hutch made the '60's peace sign. "Are you hungry? I could call out for pizza..."

"No thanks--and you don't have to stay, I'll do fine."

"I saw."

"Fuck off, Hutch!" Starsky stomped up the stairs and then stared at his doorknob in consternation. He kicked the front door, delivering a savage blow before slumping against the wall. He accidentally pressed the doorbell with his elbow causing a familiar greeting to chime inside the house.

Using his own key, Hutch unlocked the door and walked in. Starsky stayed right where he was, hugging the still drying plaster casts up to his chest. "You coming in? Doctor said to put those up on pillows, keep 'em elevated."

"I heard him."

Hutch stayed quietly in the doorway for several minutes, then straightened his shoulders. "Place looks better than the last time I saw it. You've moved the couch and the bookcase."

Starsky wasn't about to be placated with discussions on his interior decorating savvy. He'd moved into this place less than two months ago, the old apartment holding too many memories of break-ins in the middle of the night. Right now his arms hurt like hell, his hip ached, both knees were stinging like crazy, and all he wanted was a long relaxing soak in the tub, with a bottle of beer. Those pleasures were out of reach for almost two months, along with just about everything else on earth. He couldn't work, couldn't take care of himself, and no longer had any control over his life. "I hate having casts on my arms," he admitted finally, looking up at his partner. It was mid summer and the sun was only just dipping below the horizon. Hutch's hair was like a beacon in the twilight, all silvery white.

"It's a bummer," Hutch agreed. "Coming in?"

"It's hot in here," Starsky grumped. The house had been shut up all day while they were at the game. There was a stuffy airlessness that clung to him, giving him an itchy, nauseated feeling.

"Soda and painkillers for you." Hutch moved easily around the place, locating the necessary items without much of a search.

Starsky already resented that ease of movement, and lowered himself down on the couch. Deep, aching pain rose up from both wrists, debilitating and demoralizing. He didn't want to feel the emotions that had begun welling up inside the moment the doctor wrapped his arms in clingy cotton stockinet and then started piling on the thick, wet goo. Each layer of restricting plaster had driven home just how helpless he was, how completely vulnerable he would be without the ability to hold a gun or drive his car. Mildly claustrophobic at the best of times, it had taken every once of self-restraint not to bolt from the treatment room and run out of the hospital, unset bones be damned. But he'd sat out the procedure with jaw set, and endless, nervous chatter. Even Hutch had looked a bit glassy eyed at the outpouring of mindless trivia Starsky had produced.

Now he could feel the plaster hardening down, enclosing him even further, imprisoning him. He tried to force back the memories dredged up from the smell of flat, musty plaster dust and the sound of a cast saw. That implement of torture wouldn't be used on him for a few weeks, but he could still hear the teeth-on-edge whine as it cut through a solid cast. Starting to raise his hands to cover his ears against the sound Starsky groaned in pain, hunching over until the cramps from the sudden movement ended. "Damn," he cried out. The left one, his writing hand, wasn't quite so bad. The break was on a small bone just below the thumb, and the cast only reached halfway up his forearm. It was the right one, the Colles' fracture, that was a bitch. The cast started up above his elbow, anchoring the joint in a perfect right angle and continued on to the wrist, keeping it flexed palm downward, making it impossible to do even something as simple as picking up the soda can Hutch placed in front of him. Luckily, Hutch dropped a blue and white striped straw into the can opening and popped two pills from the prescription bottle they'd picked up on the way home, straight into Starsky's mouth.

"What's wrong?" Hutch asked when they'd both drunk some soda and eaten a few of the wedges of cheese and crackers he'd brought from the kitchen.

"I got broken arms!"

"I noticed. You weren't this...way when we were in the ER."

"What way is that?" Starsky asked sarcastically.

"Jumpy, touchy. You want me to think you're angry--but there's something else," Hutch absently rubbed across his breastbone, scratching a mosquito bite on his neck. "There's something going on here that isn't just getting hit by a car."

"I tol' you, I hate having a cast on my arm."

"I've known you since we were in the Academy, and this is the first time you've ever broken a bone," Hutch observed. "Had a few other spectacular mishaps...getting shot and poisoned in the same year comes to mind."

"Wasn't the same year--I got shot last year, in December, the whole thing with Bellamy was this year, in March," Starsky corrected petulantly, propping his arms on raised knees with a barely suppressed sigh.

"Technically--but they were only four months apart-- seemed like you were barely back on the force after the first medical leave. Oh, and then there was that dog who bit you when we were still in uniform. All those rabies shots," Hutch grimaced. "And that time when you got sliced up by that sicko with an antique Civil War cavalry sword. But I've never seen you in a cast."

"It was a long time ago."

"When you were a kid?" Hutch smiled at memories of his own, flexing his left wrist. "Ice skating on the frozen pond near our house...I think I was 8, maybe 9. Cast up to my shoulder. Couldn't play hockey for the rest of the winter, really made me mad."

"I was 11," Starsky offered, his breath catching in his throat.

"Right or left?"

"Right--just like this one," Starsky whispered, the almost buried pain overwhelming him like the day had just happened. He could feel the oppressive heat off the sidewalk on a sweltering August day in the Bronx. Sky unmercifully blue--everyone wishing for a drop of rain, something to cool off the fiery heat. He'd been stretched out on the parched grass of the vacant lot, in the shade from a dilapidated brownstone, just waiting for his dad to come home from a day at the garage. He'd had a slender stick wedged up under the edge of his cast, trying to scratch the elusive itch that had maddened him all day long, and been wishing for a Nehi Grape soda, only he didn't have the nickel to buy a bottle. Banishing the rest of the memory Starsky took a long drink of his AandW Root Beer, swallowing around the lump in his throat. "Just like this one. Fell off my bike."

"Yeah?" Hutch encouraged, and Starsky so wanted to tell him the rest. The memories of that long ago day weighed so heavily on him just like the humidity of a New York summer, making it hard to breathe and hard to move with any speed.

"My mom told me I had to be the man, to be in charge..." Starsky said abruptly, realizing belatedly that Hutch wouldn't be able to understand him without the full story. But he'd buried the facts so deeply, kept them locked down tight so that the pain wouldn't eat him alive. Having a cast put on had just blown away every last hidey-hole, leaving the old wounds raw and bloody. He'd managed to live for over 21 years without talking about that awful time. Been banged up in high school football, including a badly wrenched knee but he'd avoided a cast. Gotten shot in Viet Nam--no cast needed there, and then the police force and all the injuries Hutch had mentioned. It was the Colles' fracture cast that did him in, and brought him to his knees.

"Starsky?" Hutch prompted gently, not forcing in anyway, but waiting as long as Starsky needed.

"I fell off my bike coming home from my Grandmother's..."

"The one who lived over an Italian restaurant."

"Yeah." Starsky smiled at the thought of her. Four foot 11, wild white curls, thick Polish accent mangling even the commonest American words. He'd adored her, her cushiony hugs, and her old-fashioned country cooking. "Almost right in front of our house--went right over the handlebars where the sidewalk was cracked from a tree root growing up through the cement."

"Ouch."

"My ma and pa took me to the emergency--got a cast, just like this one. Nicky wanted to sign it right away, but it had to dry first." Starsky drank some more of the soda, his mouth bone dry, fear rising in his gullet. "Late July--hot as hell with a cast on. I was miserable, drove my ma nuts. She tried to keep me in for a day or two, but finally let me out. Couldn't ride my bike, couldn't play ball, couldn't do nothing. I started...started hanging out in a lot near where..." Starsky hiccuped to a stop, his breath hitching painfully with the effort to hold in a sob. "My dad owned a garage. Took care of everybody's cars. He didn't do the dirty work most of the time, he was like management--doing the paperwork, the books...he knew numbers..." Starsky wanted to clench his fists, throw things, hurt someone like he'd been hurt, but he just sat there, feeling it all over again. "He'd come walking home, maybe bring some blintzes or something for dinner, and throw an arm around my neck. Say 'Davey-boy, did you do what your mother told you today? Were you a good boy?'"

"What happened?" Hutch asked softly.

"It was so damned hot. Y'know that saying, 'you could fry an egg on the sidewalk'? I was just waiting there...and I heard it, down around the corner, in the direction of the garage."

He heard Hutch's sudden intake of breath, like a gasp, but it was so soft, almost far off. Much louder was the retort from a pistol. One, two, three shots. Fired in rapid succession, and then the screams, the shouting and the screech of a car going fast around a corner. The acrid smell of burnt rubber on the hot pavement.

Davey-boy had frozen, the twig still jammed up under his cast. There was another scream, this time female, and he recognized Mrs. Mazurski who ran the kosher deli next to the garage. He was up and running before he even realized his feet were moving.

"My pa," Starsky whispered, seeing the still form gushing blood as clearly now as it had been in 1955. "He was shot--uh---in the street. I tried to do something, make him wake up...I don't even know..."

"Starsky," Hutch breathed out, reaching out for him. Starsky flinched as if shot himself, and then gave a shuddery, drawn out breath like someone coming up from swimming underwater for too long. "You don't have to tell me."

Panting, Starsky swallowed reflexively. "I don't remember going to the hospital. At all. I think someone took me in their car...followed the ambulance. And then my mom was there, and Nicky, and a bunch of uncles and aunts, everybody crying. My grandma...she was hugging Nicky but I wouldn't let anybody come near me." He looked down at the green surgical scrubs the hospital had let him go home in half expecting to see his '50's style jeans with the rolled up cuffs, black high topped Ked's, and red and blue striped tee. "I was all covered in blood. My pa's blood...and they tol' me he was dead..." Starsky leaned forward, into the hand Hutch still held out and then, too tired to hold up his own weight, simply collapsed against him. Hutch's strength sustained him, supported him, and he almost sobbed when gentle arms curved around him to carefully hug him. Starsky didn't care that the pressure on every point in his body hurt, when Hutch scootched closer, he let his head rest on those strong shoulders.

"Sssh, " Hutch soothed, stroking his back with a feather light touch as if afraid to hurt him.

"They made me stay in the hospital all night--I'm not sure if it was because I was just so out of it, or something happened--I don't remember. There was blood all over me. On my cast...under my fingernails, I was holdin' onto his shirt so hard. Red blood all over my cast... my Mom told 'em to clean it up. So, in the morning, the doctor cut off my cast and put on a new one...if the nurse hadn't 'a been holdin' me on the table I woulda jumped right off an' run so fast..." Starsky rubbed his aching, wet eyes against Hutch's shirt, irritating the new scabs on his nose and forehead, but he didn't care. "After that, I just kept running the whole rest of the year. Remember me talkin' about Sharmin?"

"You were infatuated with her." Starsky felt Hutch's nod against the side of his head and smiled, just a little.

"No wonder she didn't remember me...I was a wild kid, running with the baddest of the bad," Starsky heaved a sigh, afraid to move out of the circle of love that held him fast. "I even tried to get outta goin' to Pa's funeral. I didn't want to see them put him in the ground...I ran out of the cemetery. It was finally raining, and I just ran and ran..." He chuckled a sardonic little laugh that hurt way down deep. "Got my cast all wet, made it really smooshy."

"And they had to hold you down, cut it off and put on another one," Hutch concluded sadly. "Starsk, why didn’t you say something to Dr. McCullers? To me?"

"I wanted to handle it myself," Starsky tilted his head back against the edge of the couch. "Hadn't had a cast since I was 11. Never thought about it..."

"Did you find out who did it? Why'd your father get shot?"

"I dunno," Starsky said too quickly and winced, hoping Hutch would think the grimace was from bone pain and not memories. He did know--at least, some of it, but that was for another time, another night of confessions.

"Today, you tried to get up after the car hit you," Hutch stated.

"Cause I wanted to get that turkey who took the ol' ladies' purse."

"Because you wanted to run."

"Yeah," Starsky agreed softly.

"Your first instinct is always to run--straight into the thick of things." Hutch plucked a forgotten icepack off the table and placed it on Starsky's forehead. "You don't even think, you just go."

"My ma was always telling me to look before I leaped. Didn't work."

"You're running after the person who killed your dad," Hutch said quietly. "Every single time. You're trying to stop it from happening, so you keep charging after the criminals to stop them before one more little boy loses his daddy."

"You think?" Starsky steadied the old fashioned ice pack, like the Thin Man used to wear to relieve a hangover, with his less restricted left arm. He really felt wretched, and yet, telling the whole horrible tale to Hutch felt good. He was lighter somehow, and less closed in. Both casts still held him fast, reducing him to the level of a vulnerable child unable to even cut his own food or tie a shoelace, but they no longer were the prisons he'd imagined. "I kept thinking if I'd only walked down to the garage...instead of waitin' for him. Maybe I coulda seen who...seen the gun, or stopped him...stopped my Pa from coming out and getting shot..."

"Starsky, you were 11 years old," Hutch said reasonably and then stopped, as if realizing logic wouldn't change anything 21 years after the fact. "Hey, you got any pictures of your dad?"

Infinitely thankful that he had this wise man as a friend, Starsky nodded. "In the closet, on the shelf. Shoebox, I think."

After poking through two boxes in the closet marked Adidas, Hutch found a treasure trove of old photos in a box decorated with a cheerful looking red apple wearing a flowery hat and false eyelashes. "Pretty Lady Apples," he corrected, showing Starsky.

"She's cute, but not my type," Starsky deadpanned. The ice pack had gotten too cold so he deposited it on the coffee table, pushing aside the clutter of cups and food with his foot to make room for the box. His whole body ached abysmally so he was glad of any distraction.

"Well, well, well," Hutch crowed, holding up a picture of a dark haired child covered in mud. "This has to be you."

"Hey, I was five," Starsky defended himself, examining the photo.

"I meant that you still dress the same."

Hutch pulled out a few more, all Starsky by himself or with his younger brother Nicky. There was a strong family resemblance, two boys with brown, unruly hair, and a look of mischievousness personified. There were pictures of little Davey at family functions, even one where he was dressed in a blue suit complete with shorts and long socks, wearing a yarmulke. Hutch teased him unmercifully about that one. School photos followed, twenty two children clustered around severe looking women wearing old fashioned full skirted dresses. Starsky was almost always in the front row, one of the shorter boys, his clothes in disarray, his face never quite as composed as the other kids for the solemn occasion. There a glint of pure 'boy' about him, as if he were hiding a frog and a sling shot in his back pocket for some adventures as soon as the bell released him from the halls of learning.

"I haven't seen one of your father," Hutch said, flipping through another pile.

"He was always holding the camera," Starsky answered, touching a picture of he, Nicky, their mother and Grandmother in front of a red and while checked awning advertising an all you can eat spaghetti night.

"Okay, here we go," Hutch located a photograph, a moment frozen in black and white perfection from 21 years ago. "Your whole family..." he paused, his voice not quite steady.

"Lemme see," Starsky urged. The awkwardness of the casts made it difficult for him to grasp the small squares of paper, so he'd been relying on Hutch to hold each picture up.

"You're wearing a cast."

And so he was. Starsky stared at the picture, seeing his childhood self reflected back. A summer time picnic--he could see the remains of a feast spread out on a cloth behind the Starsky family. His father, tall and handsome, with a shock of curls held barely in check with some '50's hair cream. His mother, small boned and sweet, wearing a pale sleeveless top and full, flowered skirt, her black hair pulled back into the loose bun he remembered so clearly. Even today, when he saw her with the short curls she'd adopted as an older woman, he wanted that bun back. Nicky, about six years old, missing his two front teeth and holding an ice cream cone. And little Davey, right arm casted into an 'S' shape; elbow bent at a right angle and wrist canted downward, just as it currently was, wearing a shirt he knew to be red and blue striped, and cuffed blue jeans.

"You look just like him."

"Yeah," Starsky hitched a breath, but the tears had finally dried up. It had been decades since he'd taken a good look at his father. Really seen the man as a man, not the parent taken so shockingly from him. David Starsky did look like his father--same build, same eyes, hair; and there was about the man a look of laughter, fun and hope. Hope for the future for his two sons, a future he would never see. "He'd work half days on Fridays sometimes, come home and we'd have a picnic on the grass when it was getting cooler." The hurt inside was like alive thing, but remembering the good times was right, as necessary as breathing. "We never did that again, after...my ma told me I had to be a man, be in charge...but I ran, Hutch...I didn't want to take his place."

"You weren't old enough to have that kind of responsibility."

"I was supposed to," Starsky shrugged. "My mom had to go to work, make some money. I was supposed to watch Nicky...but I just kept running, getting in trouble..."

"Something you do quite well," Hutch quipped.

"Thanks a lot," Starsky pretended to sneer, but the teasing helped ease the tension. "My ma got fed up with me finally. The next summer she sent me to California, to get away from a lot of stuff, but it just felt like running away to me. And I put it all behind me. Tried to forget what havin' a father felt like..."

"Did it work?"

"Sort of. I really did forget--almost--about this." He reached out his left forefinger, the movement jarring his broken thumb and renewing the throbbing ache inside the cast. "Until breakin' another damned arm brought it all back. What'd you call it?"

"A Colles' fracture."

"Like Lassie?"

"Not a collie, it's Colles'. Ellen, the paramedic told me. She asked me out."

"You gonna go?"

"I was kind of distracted. My best friend got hit by a car."

"D'you think bones hold memories, Hutch?"

"Sure." Hutch smiled, picking up the proof that once David Starsky did have a father.

"Cause I think I needed to break my arm. Maybe it's a sign that my dad is talking to me." He remembered that deep voice asking, _'Davey-boy, were you a good boy today?'_

"Like makin' me take stock of my life. To slow down, maybe. Stop running so fast."

"I think he'd be proud of you," Hutch said decisively. "Got a cop in the family."

"I hope so. I couldn't save him but maybe I helped somebody else?"

"That lady got her purse back. Only had three fifty in her wallet, but she told me that she had pictures of her son. Who died in Viet Nam. The only pictures she had of him."

"Hey!" Starsky brightened. "Made her happy, huh?"

"You made her happy. How about you? Did it make you happy?"

"Helpin' her, did. Thinking about my dad...it's hard but, yeah, it made me happy. On th'other hand, getting hit by a car? That, I coulda done without."

"I'm just happy you didn't crack your head open, idiot."

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me," Starsky chanted the ditty from his boyhood, looking over at his partner and was suddenly filled with an amazing zest for life. What if things had been different? If his father hadn't died he might never had gone out to California. He might never have done a lot of things that made him the person that he was on this day in 1976--most of all, he might never have met his best friend in the entire world. Maybe there was a reason for everything, even if that reason is not immediately apparent. "So we're all happy?"

"I could step back, and qualify that answer with reservations but..." Hutch began but Starsky squawked and tossed a sofa pillow at him. "I'm happy."

Fin


End file.
